Alert!

Hello, reader! If you intend to post a link to this blog on Twitter, be aware that for utterly mysterious reasons, Twitter thinks this blog is spam, and will prevent you from linking to it. Here's a workaround: change the .com in the address to .ca. I call it the "Maple Leaf Loophole." And thanks for sharing!

Friday, July 3, 2015

Friday Favorites 3

Hey! You thought I forgot, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?! (Excusable. That would be totally in character.) I just arrived a few days ago at the best mathematical summer thing in the world, the Summer Program in Mathematical Problem Solving, where I'm teaching a course called Math Team Strategies. It's so great, you guys. The staff is the bomb. The campers get here tomorrow. Now for some faves:

Who doesn't love a sweet math song? Okay there are people but you have to admit that this is delightful, even if you're not a singing-in-math-class type. Also if you need to catch up on Sean's (and other members of his school's) previous works of art: here's Graph Shop, f(u), and the classic Slope Rider.

Nicora breaks down how she chooses or adapts mathematical tasks to use for teacher learning. This one is maybe a bit specialized for folks who work with groups of teachers, but if you are looking for good PD to sign up for as a math teacher, this kind of learning has had a huge impact on my practice.

If you're at a GAFE school, and you haven't checked out what Google Classroom can do in the past three months or so, you really should get on that. (Especially if you're still using Doctopus. GC is way easier.) And Pear Deck is, of course, the money. And now they're more integrated. Go make some cool shit happen.

(My favorite use of Pear Deck is asking kids to find numbers for (x, y) that make an equation true, and then each student plots that point on the Pear Deck slide. The collective points lie along a line, or a circle, or whatever. Connection between multiple representations: made. I used that move on them like a dozen times this year and it never got old. Here's a straightforward post by Jon Orr showing what this can look like.)